An early
artifact of the squatted Attics: a conventional porcelain WC surrounded by an
exquisitely economic screen-wall of two sections of Silo steel-ducting and a
red-curtain entry; on the inside a 'chance' flange supports loo-roll and book.
A 10cm gap between the overlapping sections plays a subtle joke on
'privacy': inviting voyeurism but revealing only wall. The ambiguity of its
location on what (a stranger to these collectively occupied buildings cannot
help feeling) is both a 'street of front-doors' and internal domestic space,
increases the disquiet. Its structure is reminiscent of the collapsible work-huts of telephone engineers and of course the pavement 'pissoirs' of
A'dam and Paris.

N-ATTIC
(BAY-2): GALLERY WC - INSIDE(pic 9-94 / to NNW)

In connection with realising this object - a
transforming of dumped metal from the N.Tower - Henriette emphasised "
... surprise, the 'Ah Ha' experience" - remarking "It's so nice
living here, it gives so much pleasure these kind of things, its like
playing" - and that the result is "practical and fun,
beauty".

It's instructive to compare the 'inspired economy'
of this facility with its 'properly-built' cement-block square-walled S Attic
rival. Which would mass-culture call 'primitive'? - yet this version is more
serviceable: as well as more easily made and modified, and it has a shelf, and
cracks jokes!

All
the windows' glass was broken but
all frames are original - there was not much weather-decay on the east side.

.

the NORTH ATTIC APTS [ NB: Apts are designated by the names of their present occupiers (who are
not necessarily their makers)]

Seperated
by 11m of "Museum" causeway the two Attics developed slightly
differently:

The N
Attic exemplifies the Collective's decision that Attic and Ground-Floor
living-spaces should not exceed three bays/rows of silos (approx 11.5m). There
are thus four 3-bay apts; however all differ in width: the first (a mirror
of the S side) is gouged by the Attic's central Museum access and totals only
73m²; the next two: 96m² and 110m², increasingly squeeze the access
gallery; the last (like its almost-identical south twin) is huge, occupying the
whole width and totalling 188m² (with its lower floor but without its roof
platforms).

With no
shared facility ¾ of its apts have their own bath and/or shower; Henriette's
even has its own WC, the others share the 'primative' gallery WC.

Like
Andrea's in the S-Attic this first apt in the N-Attic's row loses space to the
attic's central
entry from the "Museum" - thus it is only 73m².

Peat
moved into the Silo in 1992 (when the "Red Light District" squat
"Patapoe" was renovated) to cook in the Kroeg and make performances.
When a year later he acquired this apt-space it was already 'roughly sketched':
external walls and a small platform under the roof's centre (now storage and
guest-bed). Peat has now covered most of the concrete floor with carpet on
flat-surfaced wood palettes and equipped it almost completely from the weekly
street-dumps: sink, fridge, cooker, two video-tape players, a CD player, and furniture; he made the table; the skull painting is a friend's.

The
apt is in the midst of a reorganisation.

PEAT
(BAY 1):

(pic 6-94 / to SW)

There
is work proceeding in the small south bay - screened from the living-area by
sheets draped over the roof-purlin. The replacement window is a crude
improvisation.

PEAT
(BAY 2/1):

(pic 9-94 / to SSE)

Looking
into the narrow south entry end of the apt (no longer screened from the rest).
The brick wall is the north wall of the "Museum". In the three months
since the previous pics there have been changes in the layout - the big table is
replaced with a utilitarian work-unit for food preparation, supporting a
gas-bottle cooker.

A wood-burning stove made by Ruitger for the winter of 1993 (when the ban on Attic wood-stoves
had somewhat relaxed). This is a bigger and simple: no water-heating,
version in Connie's ground-floor apt. It uses a 1.6m high steel cone that was found in
the "Museum": once part of a small 'cyclone-separator' that whirled
dust from grain. The cone is fuelled through its own in-situ door and raised
on little legs so that its round ash-tray can be slid from under it. The
robust chimney is Silo suction pipe.

RUTGER
(BAY 7/8/9):
(pic 9-94 / to WWN)

RUTGER
(BAY 8/9): TO N END
(pic 9-94 / to NNW)

The
'entry' into the north kitchen end of the apt.

RUTGER
(BAY 9): NW CORNER WITH TABLE & KITCHEN
(pic 9-94 / to NW)

RUTGER
(BAY 9): NW WINDOW (pic 9-94 / to NW)

A
table in the kitchen area next to a strange window filled with strips of glass
that blear the monumental barge activity of the tremendous Houthavens.

Henriette's was the first
apt in the North-Attic: she came to the Silo 2 months after the squatting,
began building it in Autumn 1989 and occupied it from February 1990. Her apt is a huge 188m² space across the
north end; like Koik's in the south it occupies the main attic's last bay and extends through the brick arches
(that underpin the gable-end of the Silo's main roof) into the terminating
mansard loft and its shallow windowed floor beneath. Unlike Koik's which is dark
complex and object filled, Henriette's space-beyond-the-arches is light simple
and empty: a huge dance-studio lit through a glazed west wall.

One enters Henriette's at the gallery's
north end via an elegant scrapped glazed-door into a kitchen-space, narrowed at
first by Rutger's overlapping apt, its wooden wall faced
with shelves behind doors of scrap windows; and floored with marble fragments
found scattered on KNSM Eiland's defunct dock-railway. The first full-width bay
opens to the left beneath a bed-platform into a living-room that spans the remaining
width. At both sides of this last bay before the arches windows give access via short
steps to the shallow-pitched roofs that jut
into the space above the water - each engineered by Henriette to mediate contrasting
experiences of space and view.

She has made daring
structural modifications: not only dropped the pitch of the east side-roof to form a flat
terrace but, to convert the entire mansard for dance, removed its longitudinal beams and pillars and on its
west side cut the roof's lowest segment along its junction with the floor, jacked this massive timber
slab like a hinged flap onto supporting posts and filled the gap with
street-found windows and the loft with light.

The 88m² dance-space has a smooth hardboard floor (brought from a similar studio in
Boelgakov squat) laid on "layers and layers" of carpet. Through its
terminating wall a door opens into the "Iron-Tower" (N-Tower) built against the Silo's
north end. Down a short stair is an 'underfloor' used to store clothes and performance-costumes; with a glass-divided room housing a bath raised on steel
ducting legs and a WC perched in a wall-alcove like
a throne.

HENRIETTE
(BAY 9): KITCHEN S-END WITH APT
ENTRY
(pic 9-94 / to S)

Like Koik's in the south Henriette's north-end apt was able to claim three
whole-width bays (10/11/12). Unlike Koik's her's also includes 1/3 of bay 9,
enabling a 2-bay wide kitchen.

The
apt is partitioned with many scrapped glazed windows and doors - the gallery
entry is a delicate glazed double door; the shelves lining the bay-9 inner
wall are doored with glazed windows; the living-room, bed platform and dance studio are screened with glazed doors
and windows, and her pièce de résistance, the mansard's new W facade, is entirely scrapped windows.

The
complex arch-doors to the dance-space are a sum of smaller windows; to the left,
under the laddered bed-platform, one enters the long living-room. The right-hand
end window is the access to the terrace made by Henriette on the east-roof.

HENRIETTE
(BAY 9): KITCHEN S-END CUPBOARDS
(pic 9-93 / to SSW)

The wall of Rutger's intruding apt is faced with window-doored shelves. the floor is
partly paved with broken marble.

At each end of the main body of the building 28m² shallow
(13°) roofs project 6m from the facades - easily reached through the large
windows. Henriette modified both roofs but in 'opposite' ways, affording
strongly contrasting spatial experiences: 'protected' and 'exposed'.

She cut the centre portion of this east
roof along its root and dropped it to the horizontal, achieving a flat
terrace walled by the shallow triangles of the roof's remains: a vantage
that (except at its front where the pitch and fall resumes!) is opposite
to the west roof in location and vertigo. Whereas
the raised platform on the west roof exposes one unprotected to
the excitements of space, this east roof 'cradles' and offers flowers, table and chairs from which to enjoy at
leisure the spectacle of Het
Ij.

HENRIETTE
(BAY 10): THE EAST ROOF TERRACE - VIEW TO SOUTH
(pic 6-94 / to S)

The
living-room and the dance studio are screened from the kitchen with
partitions of scrap windows - part fixed walls and part hinged flaps [ref
also next pic]. A crude ladder is propped against the bed platform.

The living-room viewed from entry under the bed-platform, much of whose wood was fished from
the water (including beams from a portion of the Silo's roof lifted from
this room and blown into Het IJ by a 1990 storm!).

Before the partly
bricked-up centre arch is the living-room's wood-burning stove. At the room's bright windowed end
short steps invite one's exit to the west-roof's exposed platform.

HENRIETTE
(BAY 10): LIVING-ROOM - STOVE
(pic 9-94 / to WWN)

The living-room's stove
was 'designed' by choosing parts and only
then determining assembly. Ernst Leven [GR-FL] - maker of the Kroeg's
first stove - welded it.

The fire-brick hearth is encased in a
box-like portion of rectangular pipe common in the Silo.
The conical 'chimney-tower' is an inverted 'distributor' chute - in it there is a structure of baffles that "make the heat work".
This whole assembly extends as an 8m smoke-pipe across the
dance-space.

HENRIETTE
(BAY 10): LIVING-ROOM
(pic 6-94 / to EEN)

Looking
towards the glazed doors that can isolate the living-room from the
kitchen.

The
glazed face of the bed-platform reflects the triangle of the roof platform
and
the Houthaven water (and
my camera standing in the exit-window!).

Wooden floor was laid between the concrete paths of silo-charging hatches. The living-room's
floor planks were
once the ground-floor's numbered box-tubes that directed discharged grain from silos to
conveyors - the highest number Henriette observed was "121",
she said there were "loads more".

Most furniture is street-found except a pale-green kitchen chair "from
London", her grandfather's curved-wood chair, and the steel-couch:
half of a salvaged bed (from a burnt City Council 'bankruptcies-warehouse' near the "End of the World" squat on
Java-Eiland, Havens Oost).

HENRIETTE
(BAY 10): LIVING-ROOM W END WITH WINDOW-ACCESS TO THE WEST ROOF PLATFORM
(pic 6-94 / to
SSW)

HENRIETTE
(BAY 10): LIVING-ROOM W END WINDOW-ACCESS TO THE WEST ROOF PLATFORM

(pic 9-93 / to W)

HENRIETTE
(BAY 10): THE WEST ROOF PLATFORM FROM ITS ACCESS WINDOW
(pic 6-94 / to NW)

In
summer '92 on this west roof (24m above the Houthavens) she built this 4.3m
platform of scrap-wood levelled on a thin steel under-frame welded by Bart
(a 'demo' of structural economy!).

In complete opposition to the east roof's sense of
'balustraded leisure', this west-roof platform exposes one to
the excitement of participating in the physical attributes of its tremendous
view unmodified by security - in unprotected continuity
with its direction, gravity and space!

(The
big barge at the nearest pier would transport approx 1500 metric-tons of
cargo).

The
west end of the mansard truss is strangely exposed without its steeply
descending roof - detached from it by Henriette, raised to horizontal and
crudely propped. Enhancing the 'discomfort' of its detachment a huge saw
leans on it and
a tubed power cable descends its socket via its outer,
erstwhile roofed, edge.

HENRIETTE
(BAY 12/11): DANCE SPACE WEST EDGE WITH A HATCH OPEN TO THE
UNDER-FLOOR
(pic 6-94 / to S)

The
3.6m wide under-floor is entered at the NE corner of the dance-space. The
first 2/3rds is a store for clothes, performance costumes and
gear; the
last 1/3rd is for bath and
wc.

HENRIETTE
(BAY 12): UNDER-FLOOR - BATH & WC
(pic 9-94 / to WWN)

In the shallow under-floor beneath the dance-space is a
bath supported on 3 square silo-charging tubes, the front one is as found:
still fixed over its silo-opening (its up-draught sealed
by the bath!). The WC is raised and recessed into a bricked-up window
in the Silo's once outer wall (now shared with
the N Tower). Their elevation was necessary to connect with the N Tower's
sewer-pipe (at its L-6 Kitchen).

Visible are the small strip of windows lighting the under-floor bath (Bay 12) [Re:
previous pic]; the big dance-space windows inserted by Henriette under the raised mansard roof (Bays 12/11); the
'domestic' windows of the living-room (Bay 10), with one open for access to
the roof-platform - seen from beneath, raised on its welded frame. To the right
(Bay 9) is a window of Rutger's living-space.